Assembling Your Education Marketing Team [Part 1]

It’s a new year, a new semester, and a new chance to improve your education marketing! But you can’t do that without the right people on your marketing team.

Education marketing is not an individual sport.

It’s easy to think that if you only had the right strategy, budget, or creative freedom, you’d meet your marketing goals. But there’s a danger in thinking that way because you can miss the main ingredient of education marketing success — your marketing team.

Renowned business author, Jim Collins, noted that highly successful organizations have one thing in common: they build a team of gifted individuals first.

He says that before worrying about anything else, get the right people on your bus.

If you have the right people on your team and put them in the right place, they’ll achieve the right results.

Unfortunately, many education marketers do things in reverse. They start by coming up with their marketing messaging or strategy and then they form a team to help achieve it.

The result too often leads to the same results year after year.

If you want to see a major change in the results you’re getting, think carefully about the people you’ve got on your team… and whether or not the work is distributed in a way that maximizes each individual’s contribution to the team.

As you evaluate the strength of your team, here are some valuable qualities I recommend you look for.

1. Look for people’s strengths.

People are naturally gifted in certain areas. It takes time, but it’s well worth the effort to get to know each member of your team.

Do they come alive when they’re around people? They might do great at interviews and investigations on campus for new content.

Do they shine when they’ve got a complex pivot table open in front of them? You might have a rock-star data analyst in front of you.

Be perceptive and give team members roles that match their strong points whenever possible.

2. Look for prior experience.

It’s a given that you’d look for someone with some kind of professional experience in marketing when you place them on your team.

But what if that person has experience in another field that could give you a clue on how to place them on your team?

Maybe they managed projects for the construction industry. Those management skills can be a real asset on your team even though those skills were not learned in a marketing environment.

Or what if someone has experience as a wedding planner? That’s the kind of person you’d want to lead your event marketing.

Search for people with a proven track record. Those with a history of doing great work, no matter the industry.

3. Look for passion.

Work is work. It’s not always going to be fun.

BUT…

When you give someone projects that match their passion, you’ll get 10x the productivity out of them.

 

It’s not always possible, but do your best to assign projects that fascinate the person to whom you’re assigning them.

They should love the work they do, even though some days it will still be hard work.

4. Look for adaptivity.

Marketing moves at a rapid pace nowadays. Only those who are curious and flexible can keep up with the latest trends and stay relevant.

• Do they keep up with the trends in their field of marketing on their own?
• Are they aware of the influencers in their field?
• Are they voracious readers, learners, etc.?

Look for adaptive people who are resourceful in solving the problems you throw their way. This helps keep the work exciting and team morale high.

5. Look for team players.

No matter how talented someone is, if they’re not a good fit, it’s best to get them off the team.

Otherwise, they could demotivate the whole team.

This is more in the realm of leadership than marketing, but the chemistry on your team has a real effect on what you can achieve in your marketing.

You might not always have control over who’s on your team, but where possible, choose people who are peacemakers and unifiers rather than those who only amplify the problems on your team.

6. Look for reliability

Consistency is one of the most important ingredients to content marketing success.

Your audience needs to know that you’ll continue publishing new, fresh content to keep them coming back to your website for more. This reliability is a key to making content marketing work for your private college or university.

This same reliability has to apply to everyone on the marketing team.

Talent is overrated sometimes. Recruit reliable people who can be counted upon, and reward consistency in work and quality.

Get the right people on the bus and… enjoy the ride.

One final thing: Recruit people to the team that you enjoy being around!

Working with people you respect and like will help you step up your own education marketing game because you’ll be happier each time you go to the office.

There are two ways to go about this.

One is to simply recruit people who add to the positive culture of your team and let go of those who don’t gel well.

But another way is to work on building team spirit on your marketing team through…

• Shared experiences like retreats, seminars, and conferences
• Team-building exercises
• Fellowship activities throughout the week that encourage team members to get to know one another

Who knows? You might find more in common with your marketing teammates than you thought you had through these shared activities.

From all of us at Caylor Solutions, we want this year to be your most profitable yet.

Here’s To Finishing the Academic Year Strong!

We hope your marketing this year grows your education brand and helps you reach your organizational goals like never before.

And, if you need any help with any aspect of your marketing endeavors, feel free to reach out.  We’re here with proven results.

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